This 1976 “Golden Age” classic is, by critical
consensus, the best adult film of all time. It
was directed by Henry Paris, a stage name for
Radley Metzger, who directed several soft-core
movies of the 1960s, including The Dirty Girls
(1964), The Alley Cats (1965), Carmen, Baby
(1967), Therese and Isabelle (1968), Camille 2000
(1969), and The Lickerish Quartet (1970). It’s
safe to say he is more famous for this film than
for any other; millions more people have seen
Misty Beethoven than have seen any of those non-
explicit movies. By the way, I’m not talking out
of school by giving his real name; on the
commentary track of this disk, Jamie Gillis and
Gloria Leonard use his real name repeatedly.
They aren’t talking out of school either, because
some quick Internet research on any number of
sites would give you his real name.

The plot is an x-rated takeoff on George Bernard
Shaw’s 1916 play “Pygmalion” which was the basis
for Lerner and Loewe’s successful Broadway
musical and Academy Award-winning film, “My Fair
Lady.” The Eliza Doolittle part is played by
Constance Money. (Supposedly, Metzger gave her
the nom de porn “Constance Money” because she was
constantly asking for more money.) Money plays a
street hustler named Misty Beethoven who gives
hand jobs in seedy adult theaters and
flophouses. Jamie Gillis, back when he was young
and good looking, plays the Prof. Henry Higgins
role, Dr Seymour Love, an author and sexologist.
He meets Misty in one of those seedy adult
theaters. Later they run into the Col. Pickering
character, Seymour’s publisher, Geraldine Rich,
who, as Seymour tells Misty when he introduces
them “is both very Geraldine and very rich.”
Geraldine is played by “one hit wonder”
Jacqueline Beudant, and what a shame we can’t
find her in any other movies. Love and Rich
decide they are going to turn poor, unerotic
Misty Beethoven into porn publisher Lawrence
Lehman’s next “Goldenrod Girl.” Seymour drills
her repeatedly on the erotic arts, until she can
get three men off simultaneously using only her
hands and her mouth.

For excellence of plot, dialogue, acting, sets,
and humor, this film has no peers in the x-rated
universe. Today, most porn films are shot in one
day. A lavish Paul Thomas production for Vivid
might shoot for five or six days. Metzger took
three weeks to shoot this film. It was made to be
shown in adult theaters, not popped into the VCR,
and it played in one theater in Washington D.C.
for 6 years running. There are exterior shots in
New York, Paris, and Rome, along with some very
impressive interior locations. The script has
such witticisms as “What’s the biggest difference
between Rome and New York?” “There are more
Italians in New York.” The female performers
generally were not as good looking in 1970s porn
as they are today, but you take the good with
bad, and Beudant and Money are nice looking
enough. No fake boobs, no shaved pudenda, just a
naturalness and a realness that you don’t find in
today’s porn. Al Goldstein used to call videos
he really liked “basic adult video library.”
This film is basic adult DVD library. It’s a
must. By today’s standards, it is perhaps the
perfect couples’ film.

VCA has done a very nice job with the disk.
There are a lot of spots and speckles on the film
(it was shot in super 16 mm, but blown up to 35
mm for its theatrical release). Considering it’s
a 25 year old porn film, however, it is in better
shape than you would expect. The DVD transfer
was fine, and the sound is adequate. VCA has
restored some footage, in which Misty uses a
strap-on dildo to penetrate a man, that was
excised from most of the VHS versions floating
around. They have also collected some stills,
and as mentioned above, they got two of the
performers, Jamie Gillis and Gloria Leonard, to
do an audio commentary track. Too bad they
couldn’t get the still living Radley Metzger; it
would have been interesting to have his comments
on the disk. All-in-all, VCA did a good job with
this all-time erotic classic. They
simultaneously released another Metzger classic,
Barbara Broadcast, on DVD, but there are two more
Metzger films, Naked Came the Stranger and The
Private Afternoons of Pamela Mann that I would
like to see released on DVD.

The opinions expressed in this review of Opening of Misty Beethoven, The from VCA are not necessarily the opinions of Adult DVD Talk. Adult DVD Talk provides a public forum for consumers to post their DVD reviews. Adult DVD Talk does not edit these reviews.